Slack

Score9 out of 10

10,275 Reviews and Ratings

What is Slack?

Slack is a group messaging or team collaboration app that aims to simplify communication for businesses. Features include open discussions, private groups, and direct messaging, as well as deep contextual search and message archiving, and file sharing. Slack integrates with a number of other tools, such as MailChimp, Dropbox, and Google Drive. Slack was acquired by Salesforce in December 2020. The product is free to use, and also has paid plans with more features and greater controls. The company has raised $340M in funding and boasts 800k users.

Categories & Use Cases

Chat
Instant messaging tool allows users to communicate with select other users in real-time threads.
Category average: 9
Mobile Access
Mobile access is the ability to access the software from a smartphone or tablet.
Category average: 8.6
Discussions
Users can join groups or message boards for forum-style collaboration.
Category average: 8.6

Task Management
This includes the ability to plan, track, collaborate and report on tasks.
Category average: 7.9
Visual planning tools
Includes visual tools such as pinboards, mind-maps, or charts for collaborative brainstorming and/or workflow planning.
Category average: 7.9
Gantt Charts
Gantt charts are charts that show tasks or events along the y-axis displayed against time along the x-axis.
Category average: 7.5

Most Frequent Users

Top 3 industries using Slack.

Based on HG Insights installation data

View all Reviews

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

20.9%

7,741 installations of 37,088

“Colleague communication.”
— Senior Sales Executive, Avalara

#2 most frequent

Information

14.6%

5,427 installations of 37,088

“Keeping in touch with teammates located in different timezones.”
— Assistant Manager, TBM, SPH Media

#3 most frequent

Manufacturing

5.3%

1,959 installations of 37,088

“We use it within our IT department along with select business leaders for project alignment, incident management, and general communication.”
— Developer, Drivetime

Pros

Seamless integration with third-party applications
Real-time messaging and prompt information sharing
User-friendly interface and ease of use

Cons

Potential for noise from excessive or poorly managed channels
Challenges with user adoption and channel management
Occasional implementation issues

Clifton Hunter

Quality Assurance Analyst in Quality Assurance at STRATEGY SYNERGY (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Slack to communicate testing schedules, release readiness, regression testing progress, and deployment timelines with developers and project stakeholders. Slack enables quick discussions with developers, DevOps engineers, business analysts, and product owners to clarify requirements, reproduce defects, and validate fixes.

Pros

Slack provides instant messaging that allows QA Analysts, developers, and DevOps engineers to resolve issues much faster than email.
Slack workflows automate repetitive tasks such as collecting daily QA status updates, reporting release readiness, or notifying stakeholders when testing milestones are completed.

Cons

While Slack is excellent for communication, it is not designed to manage test cases, track defects, or plan sprints.

Return on Investment

Slack has shortened the time required to report, investigate, and resolve software defects.
The platform has strengthened knowledge sharing by making conversations, technical discussions, and documentation easily accessible.
Slack has increased team productivity, improved cross-functional collaboration, reduced response time for critical issues, supported faster software delivery, and helped us consistently deliver higher-quality applications while meeting business goals and customer expectations.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Teams, Discord, Mattermost and Workplace from Meta (discontinued)

Other Software Used

Atlassian Jira, GitHub, Jenkins, Atlassian Confluence, Postman

Shrikant Joshi View profile

Sr. Director engineering in Engineering at HG Insights (501-1000 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Slack is deployed across our company as a default messaging and collaboration tool. It serves the following use cases. 1. direction communication with any employee. 2. Slack channels to communicate with the product team. Channels are used heavily in our organization for work and fun related activities. 3. Slack is also used across products / teams. for e.g. communication at engineering organization as well as at company level messaging.

Pros

Customer issues: Threads feature allows us to group a particular issue in a single thread and discuss within that thread. I can use the thread link to embed in JIRA ticket for tracking progress in JIRA (which is our details engineering tracking system).
Ability to add folder to Slack channel helps keep important information, documents easily accessible. e.g., we use this to keep a "ramp up" folder that can be used by any new joiner.
Global search is effective when I forget which group a particular message was in.

Cons

I cannot create a group of more then 9 people and there is not easy way to convert that group to a channel. This is typically the journey, you start with a small group but then for some groups it makes sense to convert to a channel to allow more people to participate.
I am not happy with alerting or unread messages. Threads is a weak link here. Any discussion here is not indicated in some prominent way. I have to go to the "threads" link at the top to view all the unread messages. I often visit the threads channel only couple of times a day and I end up missing some time sensitive questions.
The alert pop up is transient, so I often miss alerts that are important to be replied quickly.
Quality of huddle is pretty bad especially for videos. It forces us to go on Zoom even for a 1-1 huddle that can be easily done in Slack.

Return on Investment

Our leadership team uses Slack communication to directly reach employees. This allows us to be aligned with the company objectives.
Communication amongst the team stays effective and at one place. This improves the alignment.
Slack has proven to be effective in managing site incidents. Allows us to dynamically pull resources as needed and get a fix in place.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Teams

Other Software Used

Anthropic Claude, Zoom Workplace, Google Workspace

Wes Lawrence

Account Manager in Sales at TrustRadius (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I manage a large bucket of accounts so I rely on Slack to collaborate with the rest of my team as a part of my day to day work. We are a remote first company so being able to interact with my coworkers in real time via Slack has been critical for productivity. Slack also helps cut own on Zoom meetings b/c we can jump on a quick huddle or "Slack" back and forth on a specific topic. The biggest challenge it solves for me is keeping salees, CS and leadership all up to date and on the same page.

Pros

Keeps side conversations about an account in one place and as a source of truth
Eliminates the need for more zoom meetings, giving me time back
Integrations. We connect it to other tools we rely on daily so updates and MCP pulls show up in Slack instead of me checking different systems.

Cons

Notifications can get noisy, especially with so many integrations
Things can get buried in channels
Too many channels can make finding important info hard to find.

Return on Investment

Increased my productivity
Reduced the number of meetings I have to attend which allows me more time to focus on my role

Usability

Rushikesh Vasande

Full-stack developer in Information Technology at SDLC Corp (501-1000 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

My team uses Slack every day for communication between developer, teaster, manager, QA. Instead of sending emails for every small updates, we share messages in different channels based on projects. we also use it to discuss bugs, deployment updates, and quick questions during development. Slack helps us keep conversations organized and reduces delay because everyone can see the latest updates in one place. it has made teamwork fatser, especially when project are working from different locations.

Pros

Keep project discussions organized with separate channels.
Quick direct messages help solve small issues without long meetings.
simple interface, so new team member can start using it quickly.
Works smoothly on both desktop and mobile.

Cons

Too many notification can be distracting, even with notifications setting.
confusing notifications setting, It pause when working hours end because of that i missed imp message after working hours.

Return on Investment

Faster communication between team members.
Reduced the need for long email conversations
Improved collaboration between development, QA, and management teams.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Teams

Other Software Used

Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace

Muhammad Rohan View profile

Director in Information Technology at Devtics Technologies (1-10 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am using Slack for my daily professional communications and integrations with my apps like Google Docs and Loom Video. I like how it can make channels for each project/task and you can discuss all the details of that specific topic there. I also like the integration of my Project Management software "Trello", because it can tell me about the updates happening in trello and I can update that cards back by staying in Slack.

Pros

Communication
Project Management
File Sharing
Integrations with various Apps

Cons

Backup of messages for low tier packages
Nicer way to show the data from integrated apps
Time zone / Notifications

Return on Investment

Arrangement of my projects
Effective communication
Huddle feature let me call my teammates
Available for free

Alternatives Considered

Skype and ClickUp

Other Software Used

Trello, Adobe PhotoShop, Google Sheets

Slack

What is Slack?

Categories & Use Cases

Slack Key Features

Top Performing Features

Chat

Mobile Access

Discussions

Areas for Improvement

Task Management

Visual planning tools

Gantt Charts

Who Buys & Uses Slack

Most Frequent Users

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Information

Manufacturing

Most Frequent Users

Small Businesses

Mid-sized Companies

Enterprises

Most Frequent Users

United States of America

Canada

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Most Frequent Users

Engineering

Marketing

IT

Slack Reviews

Pros

Cons

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Usability

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Slack Alternatives